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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29257989">Any Other Day in the Galaxy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn'>CypressSunn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:34:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,357</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29257989</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe never warns him before he does it. </p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Poe Dameron/Finn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Chocolate Box - Round 6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Any Other Day in the Galaxy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelisheva/gifts">aelisheva</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Fixing comes more naturally than flying. Finn figures it’s simply because he’s better with his hands than he is the whole, leaping-before-looking thing that Poe’s got locked down. Sure, piloting requires its share of maintenance, procedure, mathematics, and the like — but half the verse is full of beings smart enough to grasp the science of it but none of them fly like Poe Dameron.</p><p>Finn’s plenty satisfied being ground support. He’s at home under the hatch of Poe’s starfighter with oil and grit under his nails, a multi-tool buzzing in his grip. There’s other thrusters he needs to be checking, but he’s never more thorough than when it’s Poe. Finn wants— no he needs— this ship in fine working order because the man only has two settings; sideswiping flyboy or fuel-burning break-neck speeds that should outpace any maneuverability. (Yet, somehow it never does.)</p><p>Finn is sure to tweak a couple of the gauges, making sure they readouts stay accurate. He knows Poe trusts his craft by feeling more than anything the scanners tell him, but still he does what he can. Aware that it’s more than muscle memory or skill that keeps Poe afloat. It’s instinct. It’s guts. It’s daring the adrenaline to kill him before the fall. All of which looks unbearably handsome and dashing on Poe at any given moment. When he climbs free of the cockpit, sweat slick and glowing, it’s enough to drive Finn to his breaking point. When he might just get stupid enough to say something he really, really shouldn’t.</p><p>So far, Finn’s in the clear. Getting better and better at keeping his mouth shut. He owes it all to a little thing he calls a survival instinct. A deep desire to live as long enough to earn a few grey hairs. He knows Poe can’t relate to any sense of self preservation, but Force help him, Finn plans to keep him as long as he can.</p><p>But something bumps the back of Finn’s calf and BB-8 rolls past him. Half on autopilot, Finn turns to find his owner.</p><p>“Is she ready for a spin?” Poe asks rubbing his hands together with anticipation.</p><p>Finn puts his foot down. “No she absolutely is not. I still have to—” BB-8 signals the controls above and boards the craft with its attachment mechanism. Poe attempts to look patient as his eyes move from Finn to the cockpit and back to Finn. “It doesn’t matter what I say right now does it? You’re just gonna take off anyway. Who cares that the repairs aren’t finished and you might crash in a flaming ball of fire!”</p><p>“Hey, don’t be like that,” Poe places a solemn hand on Finn’s shoulder. It makes the skin there a touch too warm. “We didn’t add the two seat modification for nothing. If there’s any crashing to be done, we’re gonna do it together— flaming ball of fire and all!”</p><p>“That’s not— that’s not comforting!”</p><p>Poe beams and of course the universe has to bend its way around him, let him have his way. “Chop, chop, Finn. We needed to be in the next sector like an hour ago.”</p><p>*</p><p>Despite all Finn’s fears to the contrary, take off goes smoothly. “See? I told you there was nothing to worry about—”</p><p>“I wasn’t worrying,” Finn mutters, double checking their </p><p>“Oh you were definitely worrying. Sometimes I think that’s all you do. Just sit and worry about me—”</p><p>“Hey, General Dameron, you do remember someone tried to assassinate you not even a month ago?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Poe hedges slowly. “My memory’s a little hazy.” Finn rolls his eyes because what else can he do? Their seats are aligned front to back, so Finn can only imagine the look on his face, or how Poe’s probably doing something laughably absurd like scratching his helmet to pretend he’s deep in thought. “Wait, I think I remember now! Wasn’t that the time you saved me?”</p><p>“You’re not funny, Poe,” Finn keeps insisting even though he’s smiling. He can never win.</p><p>“Yeah, I think it was! You were definitely the one who saw the guy before anyone else. You forced me to take cover and pulled out your blaster.”</p><p>“I should have let him shoot you.” </p><p>On the overhead, BB-8 beeps profanely, letting Finn know exactly how he feels about that suggestion.</p><p>“Oh, c’mon, BB-8!” Finn protests, “You know I could never actually do it!”</p><p>“Yeah, he loves me too much,” Poe alludes smoothly and Finn’s entire face is burning.</p><p>“I will hit the eject button myself.”</p><p>Poe chuckles in that familiar way of his, and Finn really should have been paying attention. It’s a dead giveaway of what’s about to happen next.</p><p>Poe never warns him before he does it. </p><p>He just punches their two-seater into gear and suddenly the skyview goes runny with falling stars. Surprise rockets through Finn, a shock to the diaphragm, forcing the air out of him. They’re moving fast enough now that Finn can taste colors — the blur-bright hues of orange, warmed over with a zest of luck, all the blinding whites he could catch with his teeth. When it isn’t infuriating, it’s a thrill. Impossible to think that he’s even here, a part of the machinery by choice, trembling and braced together with hands on the co-pilot controls. Out here, they create their own gravity, all thrust and lift and rotation. A spiral of self-determination, always further and wider along than originally promised. Trajectories be damned… because they were more like suggestions, anyway. And Finn knows the risks of playing wingman to this particular pilot.</p><p>That they were never more than a wish away from a joyride.</p><p>*</p><p>They enter the atmosphere, both breathless and laughing, landing on a rocky cliffside. Below is a restless ocean that whips sea foam against the salt licked shoreline. This planet’s sun looks close to setting in a pink and yellow sky. It’s beautiful, and Finn lingers for a moment longer than planned before he realizes. He still has no idea why they’re there.</p><p>“Are we— are we supposed to be meeting someone here?”</p><p>Poe is fussing with the cargo latch, looking a little confused. “Who would we be meeting?”</p><p>“I don’t know… an informant or an envoy or something like that.”</p><p>“Not everything is resistance business— hey, BB-8 unlock this for me… no, what do you mean its not locked, it won’t budge—” </p><p>Finn elbows his way over and gives the offending door a good shimmy before shoving it open. For a second, Poe just stands there shaking his head with disbelief, watching Finn make himself completely at home with X-Wing.</p><p>“Don’t look so impressed, Poe. I know my way around your ship by now.”</p><p>Poe’s jovial shine doesn’t lessen. “You really do, don’t you?”</p><p>Finn has to turn away from his face, because the urge to say it bubbles too close to the surface. Inside the cargo hatch there isn’t much of anything to distract him. There’s hardly room for much at all to begin with. Most pilots fill it with the meagerest of emergency supplies if they fill it with anything at all. Finn knows Poe likes to fly light. His cargo itinerary was barren more often than not. But today, there’s a familiar sight; the braid twisted willow basket that Poe had told him once was from Yavin 4.</p><p>“Poe, why did you pack rations? We could have just gone to the mess hall—”</p><p>“Because the mess hall seats two hundred people. And, well, everyone we know would be there—”</p><p>“Is that a problem?”</p><p>Poe rubs the back of his neck, shrugging. “It’s just not very private,”</p><p>“Oh, so you whisked me away from my work to picnic with some privacy?” Finn means to say it with a scoff. Means to make it more of their lighthearted banter. But Poe isn’t laughing. Poe isn’t quipping right back at him. A heat creeps up Finn’s collar. “C’mon, Poe, if you wanted to go somewhere quiet, we didn’t have to fly out here to… to…” Off to their shoulder is the horizon, the light morphing into a wine-dark hue. The tide is rolling in below them, turquoise and expectant. This whole strange new world seems to inhale and hold its lungs tight, waiting and waiting.</p><p>Beside Poe, BB-8 chirps something in Droid.</p><p>“Yeah, buddy,” Poe nods. “I think he’s getting it.”</p><p>Finn steps back, thoughtlessly, overwhelmed, and a flicker of hurt crosses Poe’s eyes. Finn can’t think. He can’t do anything. All he feels is the strange urge to laugh.</p><p>“I— I, I think…” Poe starts and stops. It’s not like him. It’s completely unlike him. He never stumbles or stutters. He never looks afraid. “If I read this wrong, just tell me. Say the word and we go back to base and I, I won’t ever bring it up again, alright? Clean slate, and no, no blame or anything like that.”</p><p>BB-8 beeps, perplexed by errors of humans. Poe tries to shush him, nudging him along with the toe of his boot. Finn doesn’t let him, instead kneeling down into the gravelly ground til he’s more or less level with the droid.</p><p>“Did someone try to kill him again?” he asks BB-8, pointing an accusing finger at Poe.</p><p>“What?” Poe exclaims, while BB-8 makes a dismissive chirp. “Why would you ask that?”</p><p>“Because I’m trying to figure out <em> what </em>changed.”</p><p>BB-8 interjects with what it presumes is a helpful list of the standing threats against Poe as both a General and the leader of the Resistance. The list is extensive.</p><p>“Why does something have to have changed? I can’t just want to tell you how I feel about you?”</p><p>Finn rises back to standing, dirt and gravel dusting off from his knees. “No. No that’s now how it works.”</p><p>Poe rubs his face. “And why not?”</p><p>“Because… because! Because the war isn’t over! Because there’s still the First Order factions trying to kill us! Because you made me your co-general and we still have a hundred planets to rebuild and people to relocate and—”</p><p>“And what exactly does that have to do with us?” Poe demands, voice edging on impatient.</p><p>“Well, I just thought with the fate of the universe on our shoulders, we agreed not to talk about it. About this.” Finn gesticulates with one hand, motioning to the air between them. Because Finn might have been in denial all this time, but he wasn't naive. He's always known there was something here. “I thought that the first one hundred times neither of us said anything meant that—”</p><p>“It meant<em> not yet </em> , Finn. Not <em> never </em>.” </p><p>“Oh.” Finn swallows. In a moment of blind courage that could only be the other man rubbing off on him, Finn feels himself edging closer to Poe. In return, Poe and his entire body go loose with relief.</p><p>“Yeah, oh.”</p><p>Ducking his head, feeling strangely embarrassed and flushed, Finn whispers. “You still have not told me what changed. Why now? And don't say, why not now. I know it’s something. You don't just pick any other day for this sort of thing unless-”</p><p>“Maybe I don't want to wait anymore. Maybe I don’t want to wait until an imperfect galaxy finds a way to fix itself. Or wait for something terrible that takes you away from me. I don't want to be too late. So yeah, I decided I was done waiting for some perfect moment to tell you.”</p><p>“No, you just decided to make the moment instead.” Finn stares at his shoes. Slowly, his eyes rise to meet Poe's.</p><p>“That's all I want to do, Finn. Make moments with you.”</p><p>It's the perfect thing to say. Finn hates it. Hates it’s so much that Poe can be so infuriatingly careless and reckless and wild and impatient and dauntless in everything he does. Finn might have his work cut out for him for the rest of his life.</p><p>But still, there is something that gnaws at Finn. Something that tells him he can never be enough. That part of him that so craved freedom and life would never know what to do with it once he had it. “Are you sure? About me? Are you sure that it’s me that you want?”</p><p>“Yeah, pal, I'm pretty sure.”</p><p>Below, a wave crashes hard to the rocks. Beyond the waters, they're missing the sunset. “I mean it, though. What I'm asking, I need you to be sure that you—”</p><p>“You’re serious?” Poe sighs, softly exasperated. “How can you ask me that?”</p><p>“You can't tell me that an ex-stormtrooper was really what you had in mind when you thought about your future.”</p><p>“Yeah, no, it wasn’t. Meeting someone like you wasn't something I could exactly plan for. But would it have mattered? Because with you... Because my life, it was going to end on that base but then you walked into my cell and you… All the time I have had since then, all the battles, all the victories, all the people we got to save, that’s all down to you. And you... Everything about you is more than I ever dreamed. Better than I ever dreamed. Someone who is so loyal and brave and stubborn.”</p><p>“I'm not stubborn.”</p><p>“You are. You're the most stubborn. That’s why you won’t let me tell you I love without a fight. But that's okay. I will fight you as much as I have to. Because I know when you decide to love something, you love it completely and I… that's everything that I feel for you, too, okay?”</p><p>Off to the side, BB-8 wiggles in a circle, beeping contentedly.</p><p>“BB-8’s asking if we’re gonna kiss yet.”</p><p>Finn leans in and seals his mouth to Poe’s. It is a gentle, promising thing. Racing and happy, like the X-wing in a perfectly controlled nosedive. Weightless and safe and sure.</p><p>“Just promise me on our next date, we dont bring the droid.”</p><p>“Deal.”</p><p>BB-8 rolls off in a huff while Finn and Poe unfurl their blanket, leaving them to lay together, hands clasped and counting every star in the galaxy watching over them.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b> <em>fin.</em> </b>
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